They would ask me what actors I saw in the roles. I would tell them, and they’d say “Oh that’s interesting.” And that would be the end of it.
--Elmore Leonard, in 2000, on the extent of his input for Hollywood's adaptation of his novels

Sunday, April 26, 2015

Michael Gregorio's "Cry Wolf"

Michael Gregorio is the pen name of Michael G. Jacob and Daniela De Gregorio. They live in Spoleto, Italy. Michael Gregorio was awarded the Umbria del Cuore prize in 2007.

Cry Wolf is a rogues’ gallery, more or less. There’s only one good guy, Sebastiano Cangio, and he’s a park ranger, so we need a weathered, ornery-lookin’ guy to play the part. He needs to combine old-fashioned charm with a wry sense of humour, so I reckon I could play him perfectly with a lot of help from the make-up girls. Seb’s attractive girlfriend, Loredana, was invented by my co-author and wife, so Daniela would be the best person to take on that role. Once again, the skills of the professional make-up department will be in great demand, as Loredana and Seb are decades younger than us. We’ll need to infuse our relationship with a pinch of playful spice, which may be kinda tough after thirty-six years of marriage, so we will definitely need a director with the wit of Billy Wilder, the grit of Billy Wilder, the sh... Okay, okay. Billy gets to write the screenplay and direct the film.

This rogues’ gallery is going to be a hard nut to crack, though.

I mean to say, where in Hollywood are we going to find a wild enough bunch of miscreants to do all the corrupt and nasty things that all the corrupt and nasty people do in our novel? We’d need to find the most unethical cop the world has ever seen: a sort of scheming Richard III (minus the hump), or loan shark come to collect his debts. Stanley Tucci in a nasty mood, maybe? We’ll also need four ’Ndrangheta (mafia) hoods – one teetering dangerously on the brink of senility, one up-and-coming go-getter, the third, a regular butcher, and finally, Corrado Formisano, a lovable, out-of-work hit man with a pistol he adores. We may have to persuade the Italian authorities to let some of our creative writing students out of the local maximum-security prison on a special permit to play these parts, but can we claim that it will make them better, law-abiding men?

And then there’s the Queen, a dynamic young politico with unlimited ambitions and bolts of raw lightning exploding out of every pore of her curvaceous body: Jennifer Aniston? Salma Hayek? Or maybe a combination of the two with a bit of clever computer manipulation...

Having indulged ourselves for half a page, it might be better if we wait for Hollywood to make the big decision and buy the film rights. No doubt they’ll have the right actors queuing up outside the gates, and a shit-hot director who has been wasting his life away just waiting for the opportunity to direct Cry Wolf by Michael Gregorio.

“Compared to a novel, a film is like an economy pizza where there are no olives, no ham, no anchovies, no mushrooms, and all you’ve got is the dough.”
--Louis de Bernières, author of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin